I'm sure that these rods are great but I really haven't been able to tell the difference in performance between 40 and 500$ rods in my years and years of fly fishin'. I HAVE noticed that graphite out-performs fibergoass, and that all of them tend to do really poorly against rocks, fire, and car doors.....

But this is just my opinion. Heck, I'm happy fishin with a stck and and a bent needle with some duck feathers wrapped around it.